The Three Cent Takedown
Oh my God, just let us go home already! The intern whod been gaming in the corner suddenly snapped.
I deleted those three cents. I saw the line of numbers was off-kilter, and my OCD kicked in. It was driving me crazy, so I just hit delete.
And because you were feeling 'driven crazy,' twelve of us have pulled three straight all-nighters? I shot back.
"I was just curious!" She batted her huge, innocent eyes. "I heard that in accounting, people freak out more over losing three cents than thirty thousand. I wanted to see if it was true."
"Well, alright, alright, I won't play anymore!" Skylar announced, reaching into her designer bag, pulling out a dollar bill, and tossing it at my feet. "Here. Take a dollar. Keep the change!"
"Seriously, you corporate bootlicker, making us Gen Zers pull all-nighters over three cents? Thats just toxic." With that, she swung her backpack onto her shoulder and started for the door.
"Hold it."
I picked up the dollar bill, my face an expressionless mask as I blocked the doorway and turned the deadbolt.
"What do you think you're doing? Illegal detainment over three cents?"
"I don't need your dollar," I said calmly. "But the federal penitentiary needs people to sew uniforms."
1
The belligerence on Skylar's face faltered slightly, but not by much.
"Are you insane? This is a rule-of-law country! I just deleted a number. I didn't steal anything."
I scoffed. "Oh, you know about the rule of law, do you?"
"You call this 'deleting a number'?"
"You maliciously tampered with the companys accounting records. That's a five-year felony, minimum. What you deleted was a crucial indexing key that reconciles our entire annual ledger. It caused a catastrophic logical collapse."
I leaned in, my voice low and dangerous. "If the IRS steps in, the company faces massive fines, credit downgrades, and full-scale auditing. This is what we call 'severe consequences.'"
Skylar rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone. She pressed the voice note button, her voice immediately switching to a syrupy, little-girl whimper.
"Marcus, honey, come quick! Ms. King won't let me leave. Shes being so mean and says shes going to send me to jail. Im scared!"
She tossed the phone onto the desk, crossed her arms, and stared me down. "Now I'm not leaving. Ill wait for Marcus to show up. Lets see how you handle him, old woman. Trying to scare me with the law."
I ignored her. I turned to my team, whose faces were a mixture of exhaustion and despair.
"Everyone, stop. Save your current data. No one touches a computer until further notice."
A few minutes later, the office door rattled violently.
"Open up! What in the hell is going on here, Vivian!"
I unlocked the door, and Marcus, our CEO, strode in, immediately tearing into me.
"Vivian King! Are you trying to stage a coup?"
"Look at this office! It looks like a refugee camp, and you're holding little Skylar hostage?"
He gestured wildly. "We are in the middle of a funding round! What kind of impression do you think this gives the investors? A bunch of women who cant even clean up after themselves."
Skylar immediately scurried behind Marcus, tugging on the sleeve of his expensive suit jacket.
"Marcus, shes holding me here over a three-cent discrepancy. I told her Id pay her a dollar, but she won't let it go."
I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to launch the stack of printouts right into his smug face. I rotated my monitor toward him. The screen displayed the IRS's automated pre-audit alert.
"Marcus, this isn't minor. She deleted the general ledger index. We cannot generate the annual report. The system has flagged us for suspected income concealment."
My voice was flat, professional. "If we don't find that three cents tonight, tomorrow's tax filing will be incorrect. The company faces a full-scale IRS audit, massive fines, even a shutdown. This is criminal."
He was an amateur. He was a 'soft-money man' who couldn't read a balance sheet. But surely, for the sake of his moneyhis shares, his bonus, his lavish spendinghe would finally take this seriously?
Marcus didn't even look at the screen. He impatiently cut me off.
"Enough, enough!"
"You're telling me you people needed three days of all-nighters for basic arithmetic? This is a problem with your Finance Department, Vivian!"
"I don't understand your technical jargon, and I don't want to. I only care about results. If you cant even handle an Excel spreadsheet, if you cant tolerate a young intern, and you resort to threatening jail time, your scope is too small, Vivian."
Basic arithmetic? We were dealing with billions in transactions, thousands of complex accounts. In his mouth, it was grade school math. A rush of pure, professional rage flooded my brain.
"Marcus, compliance is the baseline. The financial code isn't something you change because you 'don't like the look of it.' If we can't guarantee the integrity of the data, what are we even reporting?"
Marcus held up a hand to silence me. "Don't talk to me about technical terms. I don't listen, and I don't care."
"I'll ask you one thing: Can you balance the books?"
2
"Marcus, financial standards are mandated by law. They cant just be changed at will" Even Gary, the calmest guy in the room, couldn't keep quiet.
"Shut up!" Marcus roared. "In this company, I am the standard!"
He glared at the team. "I think youre all just faking it to rack up overtime pay." He accused us of being 'miserable and lazy.'
A choked sob came from Lisa, our bookkeeper. "Marcus, we haven't requested a dime of overtime pay for these three nights..."
Marcus's gaze swept over her, and she instantly shut up.
"Stop trying to fool me. I hire you to solve problems, not create them." He checked his Rolex. "You figure out how to balance that ledger by tonight."
"If you can't handle something this simple, I think the Finance Department needs a complete overhaul. You, Vivian, can go home and play mom. Skylar, you have so many fresh ideas, I think you should get more involved in management."
"Come on, Skylar. Let's go. Don't let these people bother you. I'm taking you out for omakase to settle your nerves."
He draped his arm around Skylar's shoulders and led her toward the door. As they left, Skylar looked back, made a childish, mocking face at me, and was gone.
She left a room full of defeated people, surrounded by mountains of crumpled work papers.
Lisa stood up, tears streaming down her face. She ripped her badge off her lanyard and slammed it onto the desk.
"I quit! I am done with this toxic place!"
"We bust our butts, and we get chewed out. That log-wiping idiot gets a fancy dinner?"
The others were similarly furious. "Vivian, we should all walk out."
"We can't stay here."
"This is completely unacceptable!"
I looked at the teammates who had stood with me for three years.
"If we're going to walk," I said, my voice cold and hard, "they need to be crippled first."
"Gary, lock all original receipts and vouchers in the safe. Lisa, every single one of you, log and screenshot every modification you've made. Back up everything."
"And Sam, pull the security footage from earlier. The one where Skylar explicitly admits to deleting the key."
The next morning, my desk was gone.
I walked into the office. The door was wide open. My belongingsmy CPA certificate, my performance trophies, the framed photo of my team and mewere all strewn on the floor, shoved into a cardboard box.
Skylar was sitting in my executive chair, spinning slowly. She wasn't wearing business attire. She was in a tight cashmere sweater, a mini-skirt, and black tights. She was taking selfies and sipping a Starbucks coffee.
"Morning, Old Timer," she greeted me with a smirk.
"Marcus said whoever gets here first gets the seat. Director, intern, it's all equal now. You can take the spot by the front door of the main office. You'll be convenient for running out and grabbing lunch orders."
Colleagues were pretending to walk past the office, their necks craned, trying to hear what was happening inside.
I walked toward her. "This is the Finance Director's workstation. It contains confidential company files. You do not have the clearance."
Skylar rolled her eyes, placing her coffee directly on top of the financial reports Id meticulously organized. Condensation immediately ran down the cup, soaking the top page.
"Confidential, schmonfidential. It's just a bunch of stupid invoices, isn't it?"
"It's all you guys ever donagging people about receipts. It's so annoying!" she exclaimed. "Im here to eliminate this kind of pointless busywork! No more pointless overtime! No more workplace gaslighting!"
I reached out to move her coffee. Skylar screamed and snatched it out of my hand.
"Are you trying to throw my coffee? Im going to tell Marcus youre bullying me!"
Skylar grabbed a stack of original expense vouchers that Lisa had sent over for audit approval yesterday.
Riiip!
She tore the stack cleanly in half and tossed the pieces into the nearby trash can.
"I'm not organizing these! This garbage job is beneath me."
3
A collective gasp echoed in the hallway.
Those papers contained hundreds of thousands of dollars in input tax deductions. They were now useless.
I immediately pulled out my phone and started snapping photos of the shredded paper.
"What are you photographing, you pervert!" Skylar lunged for my phone, and the coffee in her hand splashed all over my neatly organized reports.
"Oops! Butterfingers." She covered her mouth, her eyes full of malicious glee.
I stared at the chaos.
"Skylar, this is company property. You are destroying business operations."
Skylar threw back her head and laughed, walking close to my ear. "Why do you work so hard, Vivian?"
"This company belongs to Marcus. Why do you even care?"
She pulled out her phone and shoved it into my face, recording.
"Im putting this on TikTok right now, so everyone can see your ugly face!"
"Hey, fam, look at this! This is the psycho Director who almost killed an intern over three cents! Now shes trying to hit me! Its terrifying!"
She instantly uploaded the quickly-edited video to the company-wide chat and synced it to TikTok. The video only showed the snippet of me locking the door and glaring at her.
The captions were sensational:
WARNING! Psycho Finance Director Pushes Intern to Brink Over 3 Cents, Then Throws Her Coffee!
#GenZCleanUp: Facing Down the Jealousy of an Old WomanI Will Not Back Down!
The video was sped up and set to a creepy, unsettling background track. The comment section exploded with angry, uniformed strangers.
"That woman's face is so harsh. She's obviously jealous of how young and pretty the girl is."
"Three cents? Is she going through some kind of menopause meltdown?"
"Feel so bad for the intern! Get out of that toxic company!"
Later that afternoon, Marcus played the video for the entire executive team during the weekly meeting. He watched it, shaking his head, though a faint smile played on his lips.
"Vivian," he sighed, "I've got to be honest with you. Look at how poorly you're portrayed online."
"We're going public. Image is everything. Skylar, shes young, but shes the 'catalyst' this company needsa fresh fish to stir up the stagnant water."
"You all need to learn from Skylar. Be brave enough to challenge outdated systems. Be vocal."
First, search for and download the MotoNovel app from Google. Then, open the app and use the code "334467" to read the entire book.
MotoNovel
Novellia
Bookworm« Previous Post
The Balcony Effigy Killer
Next Post »
This is the last post.！